Rhyme & Reason

by Nia Forrester

  She stopped and gave him an arch look and Deuce laughed.

  “What?” he said.

  “You’re giving me that look.”

  “What look?”

  “The one where I know you’re thinking I’m being foolish and idealistic.”

  “Actually, what I was thinking is that it’s cute to listen to you rant about access to the legal system and use words like ‘byzantine’ while I’m staring at your naked butt.”

  At that, it was Zora’s turn to laugh, and she pried her fingers loose of his to smack him on the arm.

  “Be serious! I’m telling you about my career crisis.”

  “Y’know what your problem is?” Deuce said, reaching down to palm said “naked butt.”

  “No. But I do know you’re going to enjoy telling me.”

  She scooted a little closer so he could fully cup one butt-cheek. Her skin was warm, impossibly smooth, and dark. It was the kind of dark that made him constantly fight the urge to run his tongue across it, or bite it, especially now, in the summer when it bore a russet undertone.

  “Your problem is that you’re impatient.”

  “Me?” she erupted, this time into surprised laughter. “Oh my god, Deuce. Coming from you …”

  “How am I impatient?”

  “I can think of a few ways,” she said, giving him a sideways glance.

  He knew she was thinking about how he practically attacked her the moment they were alone together, scarcely ten minutes after crossing the threshold into her apartment.

  “It’s been that way with us, though,” he said, grinning at her. “Always. But you, with this changing-the-world stuff? You always want things to move at your pace. And it’ll never happen, Zee. Sometimes the world needs to take a minute, and … adjust.”

  “You can’t delay the call for justice.”

  “You ‘bout to quote MLK up in here?” he teased.

  He ran a hand long the valley in the center of her back, finally sliding it beneath her and cupping one bare breast. Her nipple hardened.

  “You know what I mean …”

  Her voice had slowed a little; her eyes, when she looked up at him, became heavy-lidded and sultry. When he touched her, watching her reaction was almost as pleasurable as the touching itself.

  “No. Tell me what you mean.”

  “I mean that learning about the system? And seeing just how purposely opaque it is to the average citizen, how rigged to dissuade them from using it? It makes me less hopeful about using law for social change. Its design is unjust.”

  Releasing his hand from hers, Deuce instead tugged on her arm to get her to sit up. When she did, he further upright as well and opened his legs so she could recline between them.

  He kissed behind her ear, the side of her neck, her shoulder.

  “What if Thurgood Marshall had thought that, huh?” He kissed her jaw. “Just said, ‘y’know what? I think the legal system is just too hard. I’m not gon’ bother suing the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. I’ma organize a march instead and just yell about it.’”

  “It’s not an either-or proposition. Movements have to have both strategies,” Zora said, letting her head loll to one side as Deuce’s lips moved back to her neck.

  “Exactly,” he said, speaking into her skin. “So, it’s just a question of which part of the cause you want to be in—holding a bullhorn or filing those briefs.”

  Zora said nothing for a long time. Deuce rested his chin on her shoulder. Finally, she sighed.

  “Filing the briefs, I guess.”

  He smiled. “I figured. As much as you like the yelling part, the way I see it? Your strength is right here.” He tapped her on the temple with two fingers. “Also, in a few years, you’ll be an old head in the movement. Leave all that noise-making to the young ‘uns. The hotheads you trained, the ones you inspired.”

  For a moment, she was very still, then she abruptly turned and rose to her knees, still between his legs. Her breasts were in his face, so Deuce found it a challenge to look up because they were basically perfect breasts.

  “You really think I inspired people?”

  “Yeah. Of course. You, and even whatshisname.”

  Zora laughed. “Well thank you. I bet whatshisname would be shocked to know you think he was inspirational.”

  “I never said he inspired me. I said other people found him inspiring.”

  “Duly noted.” She rolled her eyes.

  “So … did you see him when you were in California?”

  “You already asked me that. No. I didn’t see Rashad when I was in California.”

  “Did you want to?”

  She sat back on her heels and looked up at the ceiling, twisting her lips to one side.

  “You did, huh?” he said, feeling a pang.

  “Sort of,” Zora drawled. “But it wasn’t even about him, y’know? It was more … reassurance that some of the cool things I remembered about that time actually happened. Know what I mean?”

  He nodded. Because he had felt that too. After she moved to California, their last year at school together, and the summer together before she moved, were like the wisps of a dream, gone moments after you wake up and never to be regained.

  “Anyway … see what you’re doing here?” Her voice was soft, and her eyes were, too.

  “What am I doing?” he asked.

  “You came over to talk about what’s happening with your mom and yet you’re …”

  “I don’t know that I came over to talk.” He shook his head.

  Zora bit her lower lip. “Is that so? So, why’d you come?”

  “Not that either,” Deuce said shaking his head. “I came over here because I wanted to be with you. Just to be with you. There was no one else I could think of who …”

  Zora kissed him, her hands cupping his face. And he knew it was as much to shut him up as it was because she wanted to kiss him. When she pulled away, she let her hands remain where they were and smiled. Deuce put his hands up and held her by the wrists.

  “Turn around,” he said, removing her palms from his face. “And sit back right here.” He patted the space between them.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why? Everything with you is ‘why’,” he moaned. “Just do it.”

  Rolling her eyes, she followed his instructions.

  Reaching for the end of one braid, he began loosening her hair.

  “What are you doing?” Zora reached back and smacked his hand aside. “I paid good money for these cornrows.”

  “I’ll pay you to let me loosen them out, then.”

  “Whatever,” she snorted.

  “I like your hair out,” he said. “I want to see it like that.”

  “No, Deuce. You loosen it, and then I’m the one who has to deal with it for the next couple of weeks. And if we get all … sweaty, it’ll get matted and …”

  “Compromise. I loosen it to here.” He touched her nape.

  “Fine.” She exhaled in defeat. “Just so long as you pay my rent this month,” she added.

  Deuce shrugged. “I’ll pay your rent every month.”

  Glancing over her shoulder at him then turning to face forward again, Zora shook her head “I was joking.”

  He shrugged again.

  “But … you would, wouldn’t you?”

  She rested a hand on his thigh. Still, he didn’t respond.

  “I’m going to say something,” she pronounced slowly. “And I want you to promise not to answer. Even if you want to, I want you to just … hear me, and let it go.”

  “Okay?” Deuce drawled, not sure where she was going.

  “I love you,” she said the words quickly, all strung together as one.

  Deuce froze.

  He had spent a lot of months, a lot of days and countless agonized, sleepless nights wondering whether he would ever hear that from her again, wondering whether it was true, or ever had been. When he unfroze, it was to open his mouth, instinctively wanting to say the words back, bu
t Zora’s hand on his thigh tightened, reminding him of his promise not to respond.

  “I love you for saying that…” she continued. “That you’d pay my rent. Even though you shouldn’t say stuff like that, and even though I shouldn’t even joke like that, because I know you would, even with … even though … Anyway, I know you would do it, and I love you for that. And just for … being who you are.”

  He said nothing, as promised, but that ‘I love you’ from her was difficult not to parse and interrogate. He didn’t want her to love him like one friend loved another for being generous.

  He wanted to know if she loved him, like the girl who slept in his bed almost every night of senior year, grabbing his frigid hands from atop the covers in the winter and letting him warm them on her breasts, even though it made her squeal; the one who stayed up all night editing his senior thesis, and making him rewrite paragraphs even though it was already what he called “good enough to graduate”; the girl who once when she was tipsy and possibly didn’t even know what she was saying, told him that sometimes just thinking about how she much loved him made her want to cry.

  “Anyway. That’s all I wanted to say.” Zora’s tone was light again. “Now you can loosen the braids, but not above my nape. Promise me.”

  “Promise,” Deuce said, his voice hoarse.

  ~~~

  With his fingers tangled and his fists clenched in her recently unleashed hair, Deuce thrust forward, and pulled backward. It was slow, because they were on their sides this time, and because Zora flinched a little when he entered her, so he knew she was a little tender, a little raw.

  “You want me to stop?”

  “No.” She shook her head, her hair tickling his face.

  It smelled so good. She smelled so good. Underneath her perfume, and whatever she put in her hair, was the scent of her skin, and their sex.

  “Damn, Zee …” He stilled when she clenched her thighs, squeezing him between them.

  Reaching back, she cupped a hand on his buttock and pulled him in closer, or trying to. Because it felt like they couldn’t get much closer than this. Failing at that, she instead tugged his hand from her hair and put it down in front of them, and between her legs.

  She was so wet that when he touched her, it felt frictionless, and she gasped, alternately jerking toward his fingers and then arching her back so her ass was nestled further against his groin.

  Feeling himself close to finishing, Deuce slowed, then stopped, kissing Zora’s damp shoulder, tasting the saltiness of her skin.

  “Why … why’d you … what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just don’t wanna …”

  “Why?”

  “I just wanna keep on … I need a minute,” he said, resting his chin on her shoulder.

  Zora leaned her head against his, let him slide his hand from between her legs, so it was resting on her stomach instead.

  “I’m sticky,” she said.

  “It’s okay.” Deuce wrapped both arms around her waist.

  “We should probably sleep,” she said after a moment.

  “Okay,” he said. “Soon.”

  He was tired. Not just his body, but his mind, his emotions, his very soul felt spent. Today had been … a lot. But the time with her hadn’t been enough. To sleep right now would be to rob himself of some of it.

  “How d’you feel?”

  “Good,” he said, letting the word drag. He squeezed her tighter against him and she squeezed back.

  “I don’t mean that,” Zora said. “I mean about your mother. What’s on your mind?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about her right now. Because that would be weird.”

  Pulling out of his arms and away completely, she turned to face him. Deuce grimaced at the momentary chill of no longer being inside her. Turning to face him, she propped herself on one elbow.

  “Hearing that she was sick … that had to have been awful.”

  “Yeah it was,” he said.

  Zora stared at him, waiting for more, her dark eyes soft and concerned.

  “But what was almost worse?” he continued. “Was hearing that she’s been sick, for a while now. And didn’t think she could tell me.”

  “You’re her kid.”

  “That’s what she said. Like that meant I didn’t have the right to know or something?”

  “Not that you didn’t have the right. More like, it’s her job to protect you from stuff that might hurt you. And she knew this would hurt you.”

  “I might be her kid, but I’m not a kid.”

  “I don’t think that makes any difference.” Zora shook her head. “She’s always been super-protective of you, you said. Right?”

  Deuce made a sound of assent.

  “Like how she got you out of Notre Dame,” Zora continued. “I love that story.”

  Looking at her, Deuce grinned. “You do, huh? That was actually some humiliating shit.”

  A long time ago, when Zora asked why he’d transferred from Notre Dame to Penn State, Deuce told her the story of his mother flying to Indiana after learning he was being hazed as a rookie on the football team. Before she even got there, she knew she intended to pull him out, but not before reading the coach the riot act, threatening the school with all the bad press she could stir up, and telling everyone who would listen that she wanted the players responsible to be expelled. Like that was ever going to happen.

  “It’s one of the things that made me like her,” Zora said.

  “You like my mother?”

  “Yeah. Why’s that surprising?”

  “Because she was never all that nice to you,” Deuce admitted.

  While he and Zora were together, he made it a point to keep her away from his mother as much as possible, preferring to spend time with her at his father’s house. He used the excuse that her family home was nearer to his father’s place, but that hadn’t been the real reason, and Deuce always feared that Zora knew it.

  “So lemme get this straight. You liked her because she came to my school, started all kinds of mess and pulled me out of one of the best football programs in the country?”

  “I like her because she’s a lioness protecting her cub. And because she’s the kind of fearless, fierce, take-no-prisoners Black woman who always gets a bad rap for all kinds of stupid and shallow reasons.

  “And because she doesn’t give a shit about the respectability politics that demand that she act a certain way, speak a certain way … be a certain way. I think she’s kind of bad-ass to tell you the truth. Even if she doesn’t like me.”

  Searching her eyes, Deuce saw that she meant every word. His lips slowly parted in a smile.

  “All those things you just said about her? They’re true,” he said. “But she’s a lot more complicated than that, Zee. And some of it …”

  “We all have our stuff.”

  Deuce shook his head. “Yeah. We do. And y’know what? I think you’re pretty bad-ass yourself,” he said.

  ~~~

  He was still awake when Zora finally fell asleep, her head on his chest, one leg draped across his, an arm wrapped around him. It was already Sunday.

  He would go to Bedford to see his mother again later. And he had no doubt she would fuss about it, and probably ask him if he didn’t have anything better to do than hover. She was probably a terrible patient. If there was one thing his mother hated, it was shows of weakness. So, she scarcely ever had them.

  In the immediate aftermath of her short-lived marriage to Andre, she hadn’t moped around at all, but instead threw herself into a round of girls’ nights out, trips to the Caribbean and spa days with his aunt and grandmother. From the outside, and if he didn’t know her, Deuce would have thought she didn’t care that her slightly younger, husband had left her.

  But there were also moments—mere moments though—when Deuce noticed the sadness and loneliness in her eyes. And sometimes, even a little fear, because after all, who wanted to consider that they might spend their life alone? />
  Dre, who had been Deuce’s stepfather for a whopping thirteen months had called him once, to tell him his side, and to explain that he didn’t want things to end the way they had.

  But she just wore me down, bruh, he said. I can’t be always warring with my woman like that. And I just don’t know if she knows any other way to be.

  Deuce had been just seventeen at the time and prone to blaming his mother for all kinds of things that weren’t even her fault. So it wasn’t difficult to accept that she was blameworthy for this as well. He caught himself just before he said something like, I feel you on that, man.

  Because that was the way he saw his mother, as always warring with people she loved. And secretly, guiltily, he believed that if she was alone, it was her own damn fault.

  Zee moaned and squirmed a little, and Deuce realized that he had been sleepily, almost absently caressing her butt. He smiled.

  Right now. Right here. With this girl. This was the only place he could think of, and the only person he could think of who could make him smile on a day like this.

  And if that was the case, why the hell would he consider being anywhere else?

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Where are you? I need you to come get me.” Regan’s voice was a whine, and behind that, was thick with tears.

  “I’m … at a friend’s house,” Deuce said, his voice a hoarse almost-whisper. “What d’you mean come get you? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  He was in his boxer-briefs in Zee’s small bathroom, having gotten up to take a piss while she slept. On his way, he grabbed his phone, having remembered vaguely hearing it buzz a few times while he and Zee were going at it. He wasn’t surprised to see multiple texts from Regan, but the tone of the messages was alarming. Many had misspellings or had been changed to almost gibberish by autocorrect, and each one was more urgent than the last. The last one read: CALL ME!!

  “We were robbed,” Regan said on the other end of the line.

  “What?” Deuce closed the toilet and sat on the seat.

  “The restaurant … it was robbed!” Regan’s voice rose to near-hysteria and then she was speaking through sobs and gulps. “I was … I was with Owen, and we were tossing stuff out … and … and … You know in the dumpster out back, we were … I was … We were … And these two guys … And they … I thought … They had …”